Black Champion

The world's middleweight boxing title last week entered the Madison Square Garden prize ring wreathed invisibly about the swart, truculent brows of Champion Harry Greb of Pittsburgh, where it had rested since an August evening in 1923. It left the ring cocked deliriously askew on the black, tight-wooled pate of gold-toothed "Bengal Tiger" Flowers of Brunswick, Ga., onetime psalm-singer. Fight-followers lamented one of the most unpugilistic championship bouts ever held. Greb, reported to be "sodded with night life," had hedged and hesitated, held, butted, thumbed Tiger's eyeballs. Greb had won most of the 15 rounds, many said, but lost his title for muckery. Tiger, though his right arm was a flash of black lightning, had not fought with the fury that might have been expected from the first world's champion Negro welterweight in history.